


It's Just a Candle Against the Dark Which Will Eat It

by victoriousscarf



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Generic Apocalypse that sounds vaguely nuclear, Human AU, Human Names, M/M, warnings for survival at any cost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 15:03:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2274258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/victoriousscarf/pseuds/victoriousscarf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Where are you going?” The man was walking in a determined way, through the thin skeletons of trees surrounding them.</p><p>“To Berlin,” he said. “My brother was there, before. I need to find him.”</p><p>Ivan tilted his head back but moments later, his eyes snapped back, as if the other would disappear if he dared to look away. “Do you even know the way?”</p><p>The man twitched, glaring balefully at Ivan. “Why are you following me?”</p><p>“Let me come with you,” Ivan said, too quickly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Just a Candle Against the Dark Which Will Eat It

**Author's Note:**

> I got this glimmer of an idea, sat down, and have not moved since starting this. So it's, um, rather unexpected.

Ivan had never expected to be overpowered, and certainly not by the thin frame pressing him down against the snow. If it was snow and not ash beneath him. Or perhaps over the last few days, ash had  covered the snow to be covered by snow again.

The man’s hair blended into the bright grey sky behind him, and Ivan blinked to see the shock of red on his face. “You are very sneaky,” he managed and the man grinned at him, sharp teeth. “I have no food.”

“Damn,” the other man said, rearing back though he did not stand up from where he was straddling Ivan’s waist still. He ran hands through his white hair, and Ivan noticed his hands were bandaged but since they were clean of blood he figured it was an attempt to ward off the cold. “I don’t either.”

“You’re the first person I’ve seen in days,” Ivan said, still lying down. His back was distressingly not getting wet, which meant he was lying on ash, not snow.

“Lucky you,” the man said, and shivered. Perhaps that explained why he still hadn’t moved, trying to leech Ivan’s body heat away, as if he had any to expend.

“I can’t say I’m quite so sure it’s lucky to die alone,” he said and the other man moved, still fluid as he rose, shaking his shoulders out and blowing on his fingers where the bandages didn’t reach.

His red eyes flickered up. “Sure. You could die with people surrounding you. Probably because they’re killing you to eat your flesh.”

Ivan blinked. “Cannibalism? Already?”

The other man shrugged, a mere twitch of his shoulders. “How long do you think it takes people to get desperate? You think they’d all wait a month? A year?”

Pushing himself up and rising on shaking legs, Ivan watched as he already turned to go. “Wait,” he called.

“What for?” the man asked. “You don’t have food and I’m certainly not willing to start eating other people yet.”

Ivan jogged a few steps to catch up, and let out a breath of relief when he realized his long legs would carry him faster than the other man, and it would not be difficult to keep up. “You’re the first person I’ve seen,” he repeated. “In days.”

“Do I get a prize?” the other asked, sarcastic.

“No,” Ivan said. “Where are you going?” The man was walking in a determined way, through the thin skeletons of trees surrounding them.

“To Berlin,” he said. “My brother was there, before. I need to find him.”

Ivan tilted his head back but moments later, his eyes snapped forward, as if the other would disappear if he dared to look away. “Do you even know the way?”

The man twitched, glaring balefully at Ivan. “Why are you following me?”

“Let me come with you,” Ivan said, too quickly.

The man stopped dead, staring at him. “What? The fuck I’d do that for anyway?”

“Because two people is safer than one,” Ivan said. “Because you’re the first person I’ve seen in days.”

“That’s the third time you’ve said that,” the man said. “What? Scared of being lonely?” Ivan’s jaw tightened but he refused to rise to the bait and answer. “Whatever. You’re probably just waiting for me to let my guard down or something.”

“I’m not,” Ivan said, petulant.

“Whatever,” the man repeated. “Follow if you like, I don’t really care. I have other things to focus on.”

Ivan followed him, sometimes letting his footsteps stray into the hollows the other man’s had left.

-0-

Somehow the man coaxed a fire out of the branches he could gather that did not crumble when he picked them up, and something that he pulled out of his coat and shoved back in before Ivan could get a clear look at it. He entertained himself for a while wondering if it was a lighter, matches, or tinder and a stone.

“Won’t the fire just allow people to find us?” he asked.

“That’s why we’re against a lean to,” the other man said, back to the stone and folded over something else in his hands, not allowing Ivan to see it before carefully stowing that back in his coat too. “Besides, it’s that or freeze to death.”

“You’re not from here, are you?” Ivan asked, almost amused.

“No human could get used to this cold,” the man grit out, red eyes blazing as he looked at Ivan across the fire. It made something twist in his chest, and he wanted to reach out, but was afraid the man might bite his fingers.

Instead, he pulled sheets of paper, held together at the edges by twine and a stub of a pencil. This time, no matter how he hunched his shoulders, he couldn’t hide the fact he was writing from Ivan, or the fact he had both paper and a pencil.

“What are you writing?” Ivan asked.

“None of your business. Stay on your own side of the fire.”

For a while, Ivan allowed that. The hunger in his stomach had become secondary, a constant ache he could more easily ignore now.

“Can you at least tell me your name?”

“It,” he started and shrugged. “Fine. Gilbert.”

“I thought you sounded German,” Ivan said. The other had spoken to him in Russian, probably because Ivan had spoken first.

Gilbert shrugged, paying more attention to the pathetic scraps of paper in front of him, and whatever he was writing.

-0-

Even though they had gone to sleep with a fire already dying from want of wood between them, Ivan woke up to feel Gilbert pressed against his chest. He was shaking in his sleep and Ivan blinked, trying to process the other and the cold fire behind his back.

He looked up at the sky, the same bright white it had been since everything went wrong.

When Gilbert woke up, he startled and pushed back before he brushed his coat off and turned away, not saying a word. “You were cold,” Ivan said and Gilbert humphed, kicking ash over their small fire and already walking away.

They spent most of the day in silence again.

“I’m sorry for the sun,” Ivan said, tilting his head back. “And for the plants. The sunflowers must all be dead by now.”

Gilbert tilted his head enough to look at Ivan from under his brows. “Sunflowers? To be worried about that is either the craziest, stupidest thing I’ve ever heard someone say, or the most badass.”

“I like sunflowers,” Ivan said. “They reminded me that not everywhere was like here.” He let out a long breath. “Except now, everywhere is, isn’t it?”

“It might not be,” Gilbert murmured. “There might still be… somewhere. Somewhere with sun, or warmth, or anything really.”

“I hope so,” Ivan said and Gilbert snorted, like he didn’t believe in the comfort he had tried to offer. Ivan was fairly certain he didn’t either. “Thank you,” he added for the lie.

Gilbert grunted again before suddenly he was taking off, running. “What are you?” Ivan started in alarm as Gilbert jumped against one of the trees, hands reaching up as far as they could go. He pulled down to Ivan’s shock a bird nest, eggs still nestled inside.

“We can cook these,” Gilbert said, eyes alight and Ivan stared first at the eggs and then at Gilbert.

“They may be spoiled from radiation,” he said, hesitantly. “And it’s so little…” He also did not want to admit the thought of eating what may be the last possible birds made his stomach twist.

“Believe me,” Gilbert said, eyes harsh. “If I could find their parents, I’d eat them too.”

He cradled the eggs the rest of the day, foraging some plants that had been buried under snow and ash too, so by the time they reached another place Gilbert felt comfortable enough starting a fire at night, they actually almost had a meal.

Gilbert lit the fire and then pulled out his water bottle, an old heavy and metal thing, scraping at ash until he found the snow beneath, boiling it over the fire and handing it to Ivan first, who drank the scalding water as quickly as he could. Gilbert repeated the process, drinking slower, before filling the bottle again and breaking the eggs into the water to boil them, packing the vegetables in to make some awkward kind of soup.

“It almost feels better not to eat at all,” Ivan said later, as Gilbert boiled more water, and this time left it to cool before they drank.

Gilbert’s eyes were distant, turning the bottle around in his hands. “I used,” he started, and his voice was scratchy. “To love birds.”

Ivan watched him, silent.

“I had a pet one,” he said. “Such a bright yellow, and, she would chirp so happily to see me, fluttering around my head. I miss… I miss my bird.”

Ivan looked down, allowing him his sorrow, remembering the hard look in his eyes when he declared he would eat any birds he found earlier.

“Your brother,” he said instead, after silence fell between them. “You said he was in Berlin?”

“He was,” Gilbert said. “Before.”

They were quiet again, Gilbert pulling something out of his coat and replacing it before pulling the sheets of paper out, scribbling out what he could.

When Ivan woke up the next morning, Gilbert was shivering against him again.

-0-

The next day, they found a deer somehow still alive in the forest and ran after it until all three of them were stumbling and hungry and weak. Gilbert tripped first and Ivan looked at him before following the deer, hoping Gilbert would be able to find them both. The deer fell second and Ivan killed it with a rock. He was sitting beside the corpse when Gilbert staggered up, having followed his tracks made in the snow and ash.

“We’ll cook it,” he said and Ivan nodded.

It appeared Gilbert had a knife in his coat, though it was dull and neither of them really knew how to dress a deer. But they were able to muddle out how to get the meat off the skin and tried to cook it in several ways, on flat stones over their paltry fire, and as small chunks boiled in Gilbert’s bottle.

“This thing is going to give out,” Gilbert said, staring at his bottle in accusation.

“Eventually,” Ivan agreed.

-0-

They took what food they could, and Ivan folded up the biggest pieces of the hide around the meat to carry the bundle.

Several nights later, while they were still etching out survival on the deer’s meet, when Ivan finally saw what Gilbert cradled against his chest. “A compass,” he said, in surprise. “Does it still work?”

Gilbert let out a long, shaky breath. “I hope so. It has to. It’s my only hope.”

“Is your brother so important?”

“Yes,” Gilbert said, sliding the compass back into his coat, against his chest. He didn’t even protest when that night Ivan lay down beside him, wrapping his arms and legs around him.

“It’s warmer like this for me too,” he said and Gilbert nodded. It was funny to feel the motion against his skin through the layers separating them.

-0-

“How long do you think we have to live?” Ivan asked, tilting his head back and staring at the sky. It was the same as it had been, bright enough to make his eyes hurt. He pulled the tattered scarf he wore higher, burying his nose in it. It smelled like sweat and blood and ash, but he pretended he could still smell his sister in it.

“Shut up,” Gilbert said. They had eaten nothing the night before, and the other was clearly starting to fray at his skills failing to work for so long.

“I remember reading about radiation,” Ivan said. “About the people who it took years to kill. It ate them from the inside and killed them in the end, those it didn’t burn from the inside first—”

“You’re still talking,” Gilbert grit out. “Stop it.”

“The cold might get us first,” Ivan said. “Or other humans, cannibals, or raiders. But with no sun, how long can anyone survive on this planet—”

“Shut up!” Gilbert said, voice echoing across the landscape and back to them.

“We’re going to die,” Ivan said. “There’s no question except when, and it won’t be that far off—”

“I don’t care,” Gilbert said. “I don’t care. I’m going to live as long as I can. Until I can’t anymore. And I’m not going to think about the way I’ll die until I’m actually doing it, alright? So shut up.”

Ivan slowly nodded, dragging his eyes away from Gilbert and back up the sky.

-0-

They were attacked the next night, their fire finally drawing attention. A few days earlier they had passed the shell of a village, but Gilbert had shaken his head and refused to approach it, backtracking until he could be sure they would pass around the village without being seen.

The band that attacked them was small. But one of them had a gun, the other two carrying piping and a crowbar, and Ivan had nothing and Gilbert only a blunt knife.

That apparently was enough, as Gilbert stabbed the knife between the eyes of the woman holding the gun, Ivan using his bulk and unexpected speed to bow the smaller of the men to the ground, bashing his head in much as he had the deer. The other man was shaking and tried to run when Gilbert shot him, still crouched over the woman’s body.

They looked at each other over the flickering of the weak fire.

“I was in the army,” Gilbert said finally. “More or less.”

Ivan took that to mean he was from a mercenary band, which explained why he had been so deep in Russia when the end came.

“What happened to your men?” Ivan asked, looking down at his hands, covered in blood. The blood was warmer, warmer than anything else he had touched recently and he wanted to lick it off his hands, just to see if it would fill him at all.

He didn’t, because Gilbert was still watching him, and shaking.

They stripped all three of what they could. Gilbert found another several water bottles, and one of the men had a bag which was mostly free of blood.

“Oh god,” he managed, laughing as he explored it. “Look. Protein bars. I don’t even want to know what they had to eat that these lasted as long as they have.”

“Please,” Ivan said quickly, desperately, and Gilbert carefully unwrapped one, breaking it in half.

There was other food, but not much, and a small box of matches which Gilbert quickly pocketed. He took the leather gloves off the woman, not bothering to take the bandages off before sliding them on. Ivan watched him work, thinking about how easy it was to kill a man, as easy as crushing the head of the deer.

“What about the meat?” he asked, his own voice sounding hollow.

“No,” Gilbert said, though he was still shaking and Ivan nodded, willing oddly to keep trusting him to keep them alive without. “We’ll leave the bodies if someone else wants them. But, I can’t, no.”

Gilbert walked away the next morning with the gun in his belt and Ivan carried the pipe away with him.

“Why not the crowbar?” Gilbert asked, eying the piece of pipe. It looked like it might have once been a faucet in someone’s lawn.

“I like this more,” Ivan shrugged and Gilbert blinked before he turned away.

Ivan walked, his boots falling in the indents that Gilbert left.

-0-

Ivan had not been good with friends. He had been too violent, too odd when he smiled and yet unwilling to go anywhere his violence could be used. Several times he had looked at the army, at the mercenary bands which were supposed to keep peace through the world now. But he had his sisters to look out for, his younger who was as bad and strange as him. Sometimes Natalia had curled up against him at night, even after he had carefully moved her into her own bedroom, and said they should go away together, join the army or whoever, and find freedom elsewhere.

But Ivan had said no, he was the head of the family now, and they could, should not just leave.

She had eventually run away, saying she would come back and make him love her as much as she loved him.

Ivan had almost left then, unsure why he was staying anymore.

But he had. Until everything went wrong.

And now, he who had been so bad with friends, had traveled for days and nights with one man, when they probably could have murdered one or the other in their sleep.

Sometimes Gilbert would huff at him, or get a distant look in his eyes, or yell at Ivan. But that was it, he never shot him in the back, or left him alone. Sometimes, he even looked at Ivan over their nightly fires with a faint, sardonic smile. One time, Ivan had made him laugh.

Gilbert was the first friend he had.

It had only taken the end of the world.

-0-

Gilbert stopped when they saw the house.

“I can’t imagine people haven’t already holed up there,” he said and Ivan looked at him and back at the house. The window facing them was broken, a scrap of curtain blowing.

“We could risk it,” he said and Gilbert flashed him a dark smile, violence lurking under his movements. Ivan had never met someone else who moved like at any moment he could lash out and _hurt_.

“We’ll wait, until dusk,” Gilbert said and Ivan nodded. They found a small hill, settling behind it to watch the house. There was no movement and before they lost all the light, Gilbert nodded and they approached. The first and second floors were empty, obviously already looted over.

Gilbert scowled, and kicked at a chair. “Well, we could risk sleeping here,” he said. “Out of the wind.”

Ivan frowned at the chair before he stepped around Gilbert and shoved the whole thing away. Underneath was a rug which he also pulled away, something about the way the floor had made a hollow sound when Gilbert kicked it driving him on. In the fading light, they could barely make out the trap door.

“A basement?” Gilbert asked and they pulled it open, Gilbert stepping down the stairs first. There was no light, and he tried the switch a few times. Giving up on it, he pulled his lighter out of his coat and flicked it on. Ivan pulled the trapdoor down after him, wishing they could hide it.

“Oh my god,” he heard Gilbert said and craned over his shoulder, sucking in a breath at the cans that Gilbert’s lighter revealed.

“Peaches?” he managed and Gilbert stepped off the stairs, lighter in one hand and gun in the other.

“Someone must have been stocking up,” he said. “Holy fuck, there are blankets here, fucking blankets.” He found an emergency lamp and paused before turning it on and clicking his lighter shut. The harsh lantern light filled the whole space, stocked with food and blankets and matches and fire logs and other treasures Ivan had almost forgotten existed.

“A fucking toothbrush,” Gilbert said, holding it in one hand. “This person was… was brilliant or stupid.”

“They probably were upstairs,” Ivan said, remembering a bundle of clothes that might have been a decomposing body upstairs, but he had been unable to tell in the light. “Hid this room and died. Whoever stripped the house didn’t find it.”

Gilbert was frowning at some of the cans. “Are these good?” he asked. “They might be spoiled, or radiated or…”

Ivan held his hand out and Gilbert handed him the knife, already moving on to pull all the blankets down and piling them on the floor, creating a nest in the time it took Ivan to pry the lid off a can of peaches. He plopped down on the blankets as Gilbert pulled several up around his back. He made a faint sound at the back of his throat at the smell of the sugar and fruit.

“Here,” he said, pulling the first piece out and holding it toward Gilbert. Gilbert just leaned forward, and took the peach from Ivan’s fingers with his mouth.

He moaned softly, and Ivan felt it jolt all the way up his arm as he stared in shock.

“Oh fuck, fruit,” Gilbert managed, already pulling down another can and reaching for his knife. Ivan was still struggling to breathe, as Gilbert pried the lid off the pineapples. They traded pineapples for peaches until both cans were empty. Gilbert even risked the jagged edges of the can to drink the last of the juice. “We can’t eat too much,” he said, handing Ivan a water bottle. “Not too fast.”

“Yes,” Ivan agreed, his eyes still glued to the other man.

“What?” Gilbert asked finally and Ivan leaned forward, shoving the coat off Gilbert’s shoulders. The small space was warm, and the blankets warmer. Gilbert’s eyes still widened. “Ivan,” he started and Ivan leaned forward to fall into a kiss, their mouths sloppy and not fitting together, Gilbert too frozen in surprise.

Sucking air into his lungs, suddenly Gilbert moved, wrapping his arms around Ivan’s shoulders and almost hopping into his lap. His mouth tasted like the sugar from the fruit preserves and Ivan moaned, sucking on his tongue.

Gilbert bit his lip in reply.

Ivan’s fingers were shaking as he pushed and pulled at Gilbert’s clothing. He had not realized how many layers there were between the world and Gilbert’s pale skin. Before he reached the skin of his chest, he leaned back, breaking the kiss to hold Gilbert’s hands. “Don’t,” Gilbert started and Ivan unwrapped the bandages anyway. Apparently he had originally only been half right. There were shiny burns on Gilbert’s palms, smaller ones on the back of his hand, like hot oil had been splashed on the back and something pressed into his palms. Ivan brought the hands up to kiss them both and Gilbert’s eyes were wide, his breathing doing something funny.

Gilbert’s neck was so pale, and the tilt of it as he stared at Ivan was vulnerable.

“If you’re serious,” Gilbert said, like he oddly expected Ivan wasn’t. “Don’t tease.”

Ivan almost ripped the shirt when he pulled it off. Gilbert’s skin was pale all over, and there was no fat left, and only a little muscle as Ivan ran his hands down his chest, along his ribs. He caught Gilbert’s gasp with his mouth. Gilbert’s burned hands were moving between stripping Ivan and wrapping in his hair, pulling too hard.

“Warm,” Gilbert whimpered and Ivan pulled him closer, so their chests touched with no layers.

Gilbert tilted back, panting and warm, skin slowly flushing under the harsh light and Ivan tried to kiss everywhere he could reach, still sloppy.

“Wait,” Gilbert said and reached back, coming back with another can, this one of jerky. He pried the lid of the square open, and fed Ivan several pieces with his fingers, Ivan closing his eyes to focus on the taste of the meat and the way Gilbert’s fingers felt as he sucked on them. “Protein,” Gilbert said, eyes glittering and Ivan pressed him to the floor, white hair stark against the rough weave of the blankets.

His skin felt warm and smooth, unlike anything Ivan had touched recently, and he made sounds Ivan had never heard him make as Ivan mouthed his chest, kissed his chin. Gilbert seemed as fascinated in the way he could pull on Ivan’s hair and earn a moan, or trace the scars he had acquired from work in the village and bar fights that often turned ugly.

Ivan lost himself in the slide of their bodies, in the sounds and the feel of everything until Gilbert tensed and trashed against him, wild in abandon.

Later they lay as they had for many nights, pressed together. But there were walls this time around them, protecting them from the world, and no meager fire to worry about, and no clothes between them. Gilbert panted against his chest, shaking almost entirely gone as Ivan ran his fingers along his spine, counting the knobs.

Gilbert fed him more jerky, and they split a can of pears before they did it all over again.

“A lot of energy,” Gilbert remarked, almost asleep. “To spend on something not survival.”

“Not everything you do is for survival,” Ivan said and Gilbert’s eyes flickered up. “You don’t eat people. I fuck you. We all do what we must.”

Gilbert had huffed out a breath and fallen asleep, Ivan not lasting much longer.

He woke up to see another can of jerky open, Gilbert sitting and staring at something in his hands in shocked and happy awe. “A journal,” he said, when Ivan shifted and he realized the other man was awake. “And… there are pens, and pencils. And another knife, that’s actually sharp, actually, two of them,” and he said it like they were the finest, rarest luxury items he had ever seen.

Ivan pulled him back to bed, kissing behind his ear and enjoying the way he arched against Ivan.

When he ate breakfast, half a protein bar and another can of peaches, he watched as Gilbert started to repack his coat and bag, carefully placing the sheets of paper he had from earlier in the front of the journal and stroking the cover.

“Why do you write?” Ivan asked, licking his fingers of fruit juice.

“At first, it was just to make sure I was still going the right way,” Gilbert said. “Coordinates, direction, distance. Then, I started to write a little about what had happened, my memories of Ludwig, what I was trying to do.”

“Why?” Ivan asked.

“Because,” Gilbert said. “It makes me feel… I’m screaming against the oncoming night, I know. It’s a tiny voice, it’ll be eaten alive. But I don’t care. I write anyway. It’s a small protest. It probably won’t matter. No one will be alive to read it. But I want to leave the record anyway. In case, in case I’m wrong.” He shrugged, curling back against Ivan’s chest. “It’s a small rebellion against the darkness.”

Ivan kissed him again, fingers curling in white hair.

They stayed that day in the basement, and that night.

In the morning, they packed everything they could carry, Ivan making a bag out of the curtains upstairs and Gilbert sliding the knives into his belt, next to the gun.

“How do you know your brother is even still in Berlin?” Ivan asked. “That he isn’t dead, or hasn’t gone toward Kalingrad, looking for you?”

“I don’t,” Gilbert said. “But I’m still going there anyway.”

Ivan nodded and they walked away, bellies not full but no longer aching. They had rations enough to last for a few weeks at least.

Before they left, Gilbert had turned on the radio, trying ever frequency he could to complete silence.

As they walked, Ivan looked up at the sky, which showed no sun. He closed his eyes before looking back at Gilbert. Gilbert didn’t meet his eyes, but after a moment he slid their hands together, fingers curling around Ivan’s hand.


End file.
